


Old Anna and an Interview about the Pushcart War

by mimssio



Category: The Pushcart War - Jean Merrill
Genre: Gen, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 17:19:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimssio/pseuds/mimssio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean Merrill interviews Old Anna in the course of researching her history of the Pushcart War.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Anna and an Interview about the Pushcart War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Castiron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Castiron/gifts).



Old Anna, (“Apples and Pears”) was what they used to call her. It was General Anna by the time I met her, but she wouldn’t correct you if you used her other name. For all that she was a leader, an icon, to the pushcart peddlers in the midst of the war, it was still a bit of a mystery to me, how she came to be such an important part of the story I was to try to tell.

Old Anna, General Anna to call her by her earned title, was sitting on a bench in the park where we had arranged to meet. Her shawl was draped over her head and arms. She had a warm but stern look about her, and she was eating an apple she had likely bought from a pushcart. We weren’t far from the Met.

I was just starting my efforts to document the fearful and yet often humorous period of New York City History that would come to be known as the Pushcart War. I was starting to piece together how the War of Words, in which I had participated, tied in with the incarceration of Frank the Flower, but I was still not certain about how the pushcart peddlers had made the decision to fight back against the trucks.

In addition, I was and am a very curious person. I find that to be a useful quality in a journalist and historian. I wanted to know, if only for myself, what personal histories each of the major players brought to the table. Where had General Anna come from, and where did she go at night? Did she make her pushcart her home and sleep beneath the stars, like Mr. Jerusalem (“All Kinds Junk–Bought & Sold”)? Did she have family, like Carlos (“Cartons Flattened and Removed”) and his young son? Did she, like Eddie Moroney (“Coal & Ice–Home Delivered”) who used to make signs for the circus, have a past career?

I asked her first about where she lived. “I have lived in Brooklyn for the past fifty-two years of my life,” said General Anna. “Ever since I was married I have lived in Brooklyn. And before then I was very young and I lived in Queens. If you mean to be asking more generally where my family is from, I will tell you. Some of them were Polish, and some were Lithuanian, and some of them were from England. I still have some number of cousins, related from my mother’s side of the family, which live in Canada.” General Anna, thus far, was very forthcoming and warm, especially for such a well-known and fearsome warrior.

“Before the war began, I was not so close friends with many of the other pushcart peddlers as I am now,” General Anna said, in response to my next question. “Of course, I knew them, and I was good friends with Maxie Hammerman, especially since I had seen him grow up and take over from his father as the Pushcart King.” General Anna paused here, to take another bite of her apple before she went on. “New York, in the winter, can become very cold, and sometimes I worry about Mr. Jerusalem, that his blanket and cart will not keep him warm enough. So, I will pull a very small kind of trick. I invite him to have dinner with my family and me, and insist afterwards that it is much too late for him to simply leave. I put him up in the guest room, which used to belong to my son before he was married and moved away. In this way, I make sure that I know he will be warm and safe, even on nights when there is snow or ice on the ground.”

I asked General Anna about her family next. “As I have said already, my family and I live in Brooklyn. Well, my husband and I live in Brooklyn. My son and daughters are all grown now and so they have moved away. My son is married, and so is my daughter Laura, but my daughter Franny never met the right man. She lives with her good friend Irma, in Iowa, and she is a librarian.”

One of the questions I was most curious about the answer to was how General Anna had become a pushcart peddler to begin with. General Anna said, “When I was still a young girl in school, every day I would walk home afterwards. Now, there are not so many things for a young girl to do in Queens on an afternoon when she maybe is not so eager to arrive at home very quickly and be made to do her homework and her chores. This was true when I was small, and I will tell you that it is still true today. So, what do you think my school friends and I would do? We would put our coins together and buy some pretzels and walk around the streets or to a park. And who would we buy these pretzels from but the pushcart at the end of the block our school was on? Sometimes, when a boy wanted to impress a girl, or make it up to his mother for missing his chores several days in a row that week, he would buy some flowers. And where from? A pushcart, of course.”

“In one way and another, I made friends with the owners of some pushcarts in my neighborhood. I came to know about the Pushcart King, as well. The Pushcart King at the time was not Maxie Hammerman who was Pushcart King during the war. It was his father, Henry Hammerman. Already at this time I knew I did not want to be a typist or a teacher. I did not want to go to school for longer than I had to, but I did want to be able to have a job to have some money and independence. Always I have been a practical person, and I knew that unless I married a particularly rich man it would be a help to have a job even after I married. Also, when you own a pushcart you are the boss and you can decide things for yourself. I bought a pushcart and went into business selling apples and pears in such places as outside of hospitals or offices downtown or museums such as people would go and come out wanting something fresh and healthy to eat.”

“When the Pushcart War began, I had been selling the finest apples and pears to the people of this city for more than forty-five years. I am not a young woman now, and I have not been for some time. Not even my children are very young anymore, and my grandchildren grow so fast that even they will not be young for very much longer. For a long time I was called Old Anna, and I am Anna and I am old, so still that name is true. Yet now I am called General Anna. Why? Because I, and all the other pushcart peddlers, decided to fight. I very much hope I am never too old to do that, to stand up for what is right.”

This was all General Anna had to say on the topic of the Pushcart War that day. We chatted a while longer as I asked about her family, her daily life, small everyday things. Sadly, it was not so very long after our conversation in the park that day that General Anna died. But there is still a park in New York City where her statue can be found, with the plaque underneath that reads, “By Hand.”


End file.
